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Let the Rehab Begin

Bugger the Olympics… the Murray household (well my parents, Wen and Pete’s house in fact) is officially in full high performance mode.

6 months post injury and Will’s rehab is about to kick it up a notch.

We have just spent the most incredible and productive week with Eric Harness, one of the world’s leaders in activity based rehabilitation… we like to call him the spinal cord injury GURU!

Through the incredible fundraising efforts of Will’s many supporters both in and outside of our local community we have been fortunate enough to be able to bring Eric out from the US so that he can not only get his hands on Will, but so he can also train up our incredible team of nurses and therapists. As the saying goes… teach a man to fish and you feed him for life… well we made the decision that whilst Will is still not ready to travel that we would invest in creating a team which could work together to get as much function as possible back into Will’s body. If or when we ship him off for intensive rehab away from home - we can rest easy knowing that he will always come back to a well resourced and consistent group of practitioners.

I tell you - Will’s performance this week has been nothing short of awesome… so maybe we had to “encourage” him with nightly Pokemon hunts… but he worked for up to 4 hours solid each day, pushing a body that doesn’t work that well to do training that many of us, with body’s that do work pretty well, would find a challenge (I can write that with authority because I’m sure my “working body” would not be capable of 20 pull ups at a time).

In true Will form - there was never an exercise he shied away from and if he couldn’t master something one day - he was for sure to master it the next. It’s fair to say that Will kicked a bag full this week and slotted the winning goal from the boundary… no surprises there!

But here’s the important part of this post… to everyone who has bought a cake for Will, a sausage, a raffle ticket or an auction item for Will… you helped make this happen. To everyone who has run a fundraising event, attended a fundraising event or bought a Will t-shirt or bracelet… you helped make this happen. To the absolutely awesome everyones that have gone to www.wheretheresawill.com.au and made a donation or a dollar a day pledge…you helped make this happen. And to those special few that put their name and money to a piece of rehab equipment for our home… you helped make this happen.

As Will’s family we will never stop short of giving Will every opportunity to recover as much as possible from this horrendous injury… that’s what families do right? Well, our family simply don’t have the resources to set up a rehab facility at home and we certainly don’t have the resources to employ the services of a GURU to provide us with a gold-standard, rehab blueprint… but that’s where all of you have stepped in and our family has grown - in fact it’s grown to thousands. Our family has grown into a massive team and together we’re taking on spinal cord injury. There is no question that Will is going to benefit from what has happened this week - but so too will many others as our group of practitioners go forth and use their newly acquired skills on many other patients.

Bloody good job team!

(We’re already trying to convince Eric to come back out at Christmas… deep breath team, get ready to sell and buy a few more cakes, sausages and raffle tickets!)